The Elite Turn Against Obama

Even the Aspen Ideas Festival, an annual gathering of the country's brightest lights, isn't Obama country anymore. Lloyd Grove on the president's waning support among the intelligentsia.

Youâd think the well-heeled and enlightened eggheads at the Aspen Ideas Festivalâwhich is running all week in this fashionable resort town with heady panel discussions and earnest disquisitions involving all manner of deep thinkers and do-goodersâwould be receptive to an intellectually ambitious president with big ideas of his own.

In a way, the folks attending this cerebral conclave pairing the Aspen Institute think tank with the Atlantic Monthly magazine might even be seen as President Obamaâs natural base.

Apparently not so much.

âThe real problem we have,â Mort Zuckerman said, âare some of the worst economic policies in place today that, in my judgment, go directly against the long-term interests of this country.â

Obamaâs top economic adviser, Larry Summers, and his departing budget director, Peter Orszag, can expect heavy weather when they land in Aspen later this week to make their case to this civic-minded clique of wealthy skeptics.

âIf youâre asking if the United States is about to become a socialist state, Iâd say itâs actually about to become a European state, with the expansiveness of the welfare system and the progressive tax system like what weâve already experienced in Western Europe,â Harvard business and history professor Niall Ferguson declared during Mondayâs kickoff session, offering a withering critique of Obamaâs economic policies, which he claimed were encouraging laziness.

âThe curse of longterm unemployment is that if you pay people to do nothing, theyâll find themselves doing nothing for very long periods of time,â Ferguson said. âLong-term unemployment is at an all-time high in the United States, and it is a direct consequence of a misconceived public policy.â

Ferguson was joined in his harsh attack by billionaire real estate mogul and New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman. Both lambasted Obamaâs trillion-dollar deficit spending programâin the name of economic stimulus to cushion the impact of the 2008 financial meltdownâas fiscally ruinous, potentially turning America into a second-rate power.

âWe are, without question, in a period of decline, particularly in the business world,â Zuckerman said. âThe real problem we haveâ¦are some of the worst economic policies in place today that, in my judgment, go directly against the long-term interests of this country.â

Zuckerman added that he detects in the Obama White House âhostility to the very kinds of [business] culture that have made this the great country that it is and was. I think we have to find some way of dealing with that or else we will do great damage to this country with a public policy that could ruin everything.â

Ferguson added: âThe critical point is if your policy says youâre going run a trillion-dollar deficit for the rest of time, youâre riding for a fallâ¦Then it really is goodbye.â A dashing Brit, Ferguson added: âCan I say that, having grown up in a declining empire, I do not recommend it. Itâs just not a lot of fun actuallyâdecline.â

Ferguson called for what he called âradicalâ measures. âI canât emphasize strongly enough the need for radical fiscal reform to restore the incentives for work and remove the incentives for idleness.â He praised âreally radical reform of the sort that, for example, Paul Ryan [the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee] has outlined in his wonderful âRoadmapâ for radical, root-and-branch reform not only of the tax system but of the entitlement systemâ and âunleash entrepreneurial innovation.â Otherwise, Ferguson warned: âDo you want to be a kind of implicit part of the European Union? Iâd advise you against it.â

This was greeted by hearty applause from a crowd that included Barbra Streisand and her husband James Brolin. âDepressing, but fantastic,â Streisand told me afterward, rendering her verdict on the session. âSo exciting. Wonderful!â

I thought is was kinda funny that they were quoting such great economic minds like Streisand and Brolin. Even the idiots who threatened-to-leave-the-US-for-Canada-after-Bush-won-but-never-did* agree with the article's subject.

* but then again look who your neighbors would be from ET if they moved to Canada